The X-ray synchrotron rims in Cassiopeia A narrow with energy

TL;DR

This study observes that X-ray synchrotron filaments in Cassiopeia A narrow with increasing photon energy, supporting models involving damping effects and providing insights into particle acceleration and magnetic field interactions in supernova remnants.

Contribution

The paper introduces a new blind source separation method applied to Chandra data, revealing energy-dependent narrowing of synchrotron filaments at both shocks in Cassiopeia A.

Findings

Filaments narrow with increasing energy at both shocks.

Narrowing is more pronounced at higher energies, indicating damping effects.

Radio observations support the damping interpretation.

Abstract

Some young supernova remnants exhibit thin filaments of X-ray synchrotron radiation coinciding with the forward shock due to accelerated electrons interacting with the local magnetic field. The two main models accounting for the radial brightness evolution of these filaments differ in their prediction of the narrowing (or not) of the filaments with increasing photon energy. In this paper, we report our observation of such a narrowing of the synchrotron filaments in Cassiopeia A at X-ray energies, and how this finding could help in understanding the mechanisms at stake in their formation. We used a new blind source separation method on the 1 Ms Chandra observation of Cassiopeia A, in order to obtain detailed and unpolluted images of the synchrotron emission in three energy bands. We then extracted the profiles of several filaments at the forward shock and the reverse shock to estimate and compare their widths. We find that there is indeed a narrowing with energy of the synchrotron filaments both at the forward and at the reverse shocks in Cassiopeia A. The energy dependency of this narrowing seems stronger at high energy, which is indicative of a damping effect, confirmed by radio observations.